


beasts

by 101places



Series: there is only you [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Mandalorian Culture, Mandalorian Wars, but i didnt and so you should all be grateful for that, i could actually go very hard on criticising the mandalorians wrt mira, kinda. just a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26768389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/101places/pseuds/101places
Summary: Mira, throughout the Mandalorian Wars.( AKA : mira is under-rated as all hell )
Relationships: Mira & The Jedi Exile
Series: there is only you [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686904
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	beasts

**Author's Note:**

> ive never written mira before and i dont hate how this turned out so thats cool
> 
> i have so fucking many thoughts about mira & the mandalorians but i tried to keep this focused on one topic. also the exile isnt here but she's Discussed and Thought About Vaguely
> 
> some things may not be entirely fitting to the canon timeline bc i was too lazy to do proper research so cope with that
> 
> also i clicked no archive warnings but there is character death. vaguely described / implied but its still present so be warned
> 
> theres a little bit of mando'a in this so heres your translations:  
> mando'ade - mandalorian  
> verd'ika - little soldier  
> vod - brothers/sisters/comrades
> 
> comments/kudos make me feel like im baking bread with my mother and nothing bad will happen

Life was complicated.

Not too long ago, it hadn’t been like this. There had been a house - a small one, but a house nonetheless. There had been people living in it- a mother, a father, a brother. There had been struggles, but it had been simple. Every day had been more or less the same, and that had been the way of things.

But, then, the war came.

For months, Mira and her family had heard of it. Riding to town with her father, they had heard whispers-

“ _They get closer every day. It won’t be long until they’re here_.”

“ _Won’t the Republic do something?_ ”

“ _Hah! You think the Republic cares about us? We’re no Coruscant. Those beasts in the Senate couldn’t give less of a kriff about what happens out here. They care just enough to keep their conscience clear._ ”

“ _I’ll drink to that._ ”

When Mira asked her father what the whispers meant, he turned his cheek and changed the topic.

.

When the war came, it was a normal day.

Mira was baking bread with her mother, sat on the kitchen counter and pounding on the dough. She brought her little, chubby hand down, and blinked when the little _slap_ she’d been used to hearing was replaced by an almighty _bang_ that caused the house to shake and the windows to shatter. She looked down at the dough, wondering if that had been her.

But then her mother grabbed her, and the next thing that Mira knew was being held as they ran.

Mira’s peered out, looking over her mother’s shoulder as they moved rapidly away from their home. Stretching out behind them, she saw a wall of fire, and beast-like men with no faces striding out from the inferno.

.

They didn’t make it far.

.

Life ended, and life continued.

The Mandalorians needed bodies. Mira was small, but she was fast and she was strong, traits that the Mandalorians admired. She traveled from world to world, walking on the battlefields with her little arms filled with ammo packs and munitions, providing weapons to support the Mandalorian war effort, and when the day was done she returned to the slave quarters, curling up in a small corner and trying to will her body that still ached from the strain of her work to sleep, trying to ignored the murmurs of her fellow sleepless slaves.

“ _I just want to go home._ ”

“ _But we can’t. You’ll kill yourself thinking about it._ ”

“ _I don’t even feel_ human _anymore. Kriff, I don’t feel like a_ sentient _. There’s only so long I can do this. There’s only so long any of us can do this!_ ”

“ _Keep your voice down!”_

“ _What’s the point? What can they possibly take from me that they haven’t already taken? Stars above, look around you. We’re treated like cattle, like we’re nothing more than beasts. They can kill me if they want, nothing could be worse than a life like this!_ ”

Before her fellow slaves could work themselves into more of a frenzy, Mira fell asleep.

.

Mira sat on a crate and took a small bite of her ration. Now, she was older. She was a slave, but with seniority, and that allowed the occasional rest period. There was no need to run a dedicated body dry.

The forests of Dxun were thick, and most of their forces were fighting. There were a few Mandalorians at the camp, training, cataloguing supplies or fixing equipment, and a handful of slaves doing their duties, out of a fear of punishment rather than any loyalty to the cause. It was the way things had been for years.

Then, there was an explosion. Mira lowered her ration to her lap, focusing her attention on the direction the blast had come from. Explosions weren’t uncommon in an active warzone, but that had been loud, and Mira had developed a sort of sense for particularly damaging movements in the war.

This was one of them.

When the front-line fighters returned, it was in retreat.

Armour burnt, some even _melting_. The bodies underneath were in even worse state, the beskar having trapped in the heat, cooking the Mandalorians beneath alive. For a great deal of the warriors, there was nothing that could be done.

“What happened?” Mira asked when the treatments had reached their end.

“The Republic finally grew a pair.” Came the hearty laugh from a Mandalorian.

“The Republic?” Another cut in, “This wasn’t the Republic. This was one warrior.”

Mira looked at the sea of injured Mandalorians. “One warrior did this?”

“It wasn’t a warrior.” The first Mandalorian argued, ignoring Mira and turning to the other Mandalorian, “It was a beast. No, a _demon_.”

The pair began to argue, their arguing quickly turning into blows, but Mira’s focus was elsewhere, looking down at the injured as she wondered what kind of monster had the power to do something like this single-handedly.

.

It had become increasingly obvious that the Mandalorians would not win. Mira could see the way that the war was going, and so could the Mandalorians surrounding her. It was why she had graduated from slave to _mando’ade_. They were running low on warriors. The Revanchists had slaughtered too many.

For a while longer, they could limp on, but it was only a matter of time until they were put down for good. The overwhelming attitude amongst the Mandalorians seemed to be to go out with a bang. Take as many of them down with them as they could. Die fighting.

Mira didn’t know where she stood. She was no longer a slave, but there was nowhere left for her to go to. She knew, distantly, that she’d had a home and a family before this, but she couldn’t remember anything about them - she couldn’t even recall the name of her planet of origin. For better or for worse, the Mandalorians were her family now.

“Are you ready to fight for your life, _verd’ika_?”

Mira looked at the older Mandalorian. “A space battle isn’t what I’d consider an _honorable_ one.”

The Mandalorian laughed. “Then you’d best be sure it isn’t your last.”

Mira and the Mandalorian parted, and the battle above Malachor began.

.

On Nar Shaddaa, there was time for thought. Too much time, really.

Mira thought of the war often. Seeing the people of Nar Shaddaa - the refugees, like herself, who had lost their homes from the Mandalorians slaughter - made her pause. The Mandalorians were her family. Their loss had struck her in a way that nothing else had. But surrounding her were the survivors of their brutality.

Family or not, Mira was forced to accept that they were beasts. She felt care for them - for her family, her unit, her _vod_ \- but that didn’t undo the damage that they had brought to the galaxy. She cared for them, but she knew they were beasts, and they had got what was coming to them.

But there were worse than beasts in the galaxy.

Mira thought of Dxun and of Malachor.

Better to be a beast than a demon.


End file.
